The Ageless Patience feat (Ancestry, Elf, Level 5) reads "You can voluntarily spend twice as much time as normal on a Perception check or skill check to gain a +2 circumstance bonus to that check. You also don’t treat a natural 1 as worse than usual on these checks; you get a critical failure only if your result is 10 lower than the DC. For example, you could get these benefits if you spent 2 actions to Seek, which normally takes 1 action. You can get these benefits during exploration by taking twice as long exploring as normal, or in downtime by spending twice as much downtime.
The GM might determine a situation doesn’t grant you a benefit if a delay would be directly counterproductive to your success, such as a tense negotiation with an impatient creature."
It is not obvious to me how this interacts with skill checks made as parts of a reaction, such as Aid. I can think of a few reasonable interpretations, none of which I think are clearly the correct one:
1) Ageless Patience doesn't work with reactions, as they don't have a defined time to double.
2) Ageless Patience works great with reactions, as they don't take up time, so doubling that time is essentially free, similar to a free action.
3) Ageless Patience only works with reactions if you somehow have two reactions and can spend both of them on the reaction.
4) Ageless Patience doesn't work with reactions in general, but for Aid specifically you can apply Ageless Patience by doubling the preparation time. (This is not even sort of supported by the rules as written.)
5) Ageless Patience never applies to reactions because all reactions fall under the "delay would be directly counterproductive to your success" clause, even in scenarios where the reaction represents reacting to something that happens over a long period of time, such as Aiding a downtime Medicine check.
6) DM handles it on a case-by-case basis, depending on their interpretation of how much time the reaction would take.
7) Some other thing I'm overlooking.
I'd appreciate any pointers to rules I've overlooked, developer insights, or even just general thoughts about this. (For what it's worth, I think that Ageless Patience and Aid are both plenty good in PF2e even if they don't interact.)
